


Another Chance

by stardust_and_sunlight



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/F, as everything i write is inherently gay, but it's pre-relationship, canon-typical discussions of violence/neglect etc, knight Cosette, okay so maybe it's technically not eposette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24475234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_and_sunlight/pseuds/stardust_and_sunlight
Summary: Éponine almost dies at her father's hands. She's saved by a knight.
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent/Éponine Thénardier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Another Chance

**Author's Note:**

> Started this in at least 2016 so if the start has a different vibe to the end, that's why haha!
> 
> I might write more in this universe because swords are hot and women are hot and sword-wielding women are very hot.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! Comments and kudos are always appreciated.

Éponine was fast, and wiry, and stronger than she looked, but he had his arm at her throat and his weight on her legs and she couldn't reach her knife and she flailed and struggled and the moonlight glinted on the knife as he raised it and she closed her eyes tight and then-

"Stop!" came a high, clear, piping voice.

Éponine’s eyes popped open in shock and her father let her go as he straightened to face the stranger, who walked towards the ring of firelight. They were tall and slim, with a long black hooded cloak. As the figure grew closer, they threw back their hood to reveal long, curly golden hair, fair skin and high cheekbones. It was a woman, a young woman, about Éponine’s age. 

Éponine’s father laughed. "You're just a girl," he sneered. "How are you going to stop me?"

Éponine scrambled to her feet, scared for herself and scared for this stranger, as her father advanced on the newcomer, knife held tight. 

But then Éponine noticed the knife at the woman's belt and the sword held loosely at her side and a wicked looking bow and arrow strapped across her back, and Éponine reached down for the tiny but deadly sharp knife concealed in her boot, feeling a stirring of hope. 

She took a step forward, but with a growl of anger her father raised his fist and cuffed her to the ground. She raised her head, dazed, and could only watch with blurred vision through the dim light of the fire as the woman dropped into a fighting stance and burst into a flurry of movement, disarming the man in seconds and striking a number of vicious blows with the flat and the hilt of her sword, before one final hard hit to his head sent him sprawling to the ground. 

She stepped back and sheathed her sword, looking down with disdain at the man at her feet. Éponine thought she looked like an avenging angel with her hair and her beautiful rage, the firelight casting shadows on her face.

“Are you alright?” the other woman asked, her voice soft as she walked over to Éponine, reaching out with her hand to help her up. Closer up, she was even more gorgeous, a tiny scar on her chin and a smear of dirt on her cheek. She was wearing chainmail under her cloak, and her tunic had the emblem of the crown on her chest.

“Oh,” Éponine breathed, and then sunk to her knees. “You’re a knight.” She’d grown up hating the knights, as her father did, symbols as they were of good and of justice, but the more she’d grown up and away from her father the more she’d realised how much she admired them, how they served the crown but more importantly how they served the people. And in this moment, heart still pounding from how close she’d come to death at the hands of her father, she couldn’t pretend to feel anything other than awe for this woman.

“No, hey, it’s okay,” the woman said gently, reaching out again for Éponine’s hands and pulling her to her feet. “It’s just a job, you know, I’m not a _saint,_ ” and she laughed, slightly self-deprecatingly. Éponine allowed herself to be pulled upright, and smiled despite herself at the earnest look on the other woman’s face.

“Thank you,” she said, and reached out her hand, this time for a handshake on equal terms. The other woman smiled.

“I’m Cosette,” she said, “well, Sir Cosette, really, but it still feels a little pretentious saying that. I’m pretty new to being a knight,” she explained, and Éponine laughed. 

“You dealt with him easy enough,” Éponine said, gesturing towards her father, still crumpled unconscious on the ground.

Cosette gave a wry smile. “I could do that before I became a knight.”

Éponine bent to pick up her knife, and slid it back into her boot. “Well, thanks, anyway,” she said awkwardly. “I didn’t expect anyone to be so deep in the forest.”

“I was tracking him,” Cosette said, with a glower at Éponine’s father, and Éponine’s heart sank. “He’s been wanted by us for a while. He’ll definitely go to jail now, especially if you’ll testify that he was trying to kill you.”

Éponine felt faint, head spinning suddenly, short of breath like her father was there again, hands around her throat.

“Hey, are you alright?” Cosette asked, voice worried, moving towards Éponine. Éponine stepped back.

“I’m fine,” she said, but she could hear the lie in her voice.

“What’s wrong?” Cosette said, and she sounded so concerned and so sincere that Éponine couldn’t take it.

“He’s my _father,_ alright?!” she snapped. “He’s my fucking _father,_ and if he deserves to be arrested then I do too. So just arrest us _both!_ ” She was breathing heavily, as if she’d been running, and she stared right at Cosette, back straight and eyes narrowed.

Cosette looked at her steadily, face inscrutable, and all Éponine could hear was her own breath and the beat of her heart in her ears.

“That’s fine,” she said, and Éponine blinked.

“What?” She wasn’t sure she’d heard Cosette correctly. Wherever she’d been, whoever she’d spoken too, however friendly they’d been initially, as soon as they found out that she was a Thénardier, they wanted nothing to do with her. Everyone knew of her family, and the only people who wanted to know them were other criminals and low-lifes.

But Cosette was looking at her, barely two metres away, serious but not angry, and Éponine could tell that her mouth was hanging open in shock as she looked into Cosette’s eyes, blue and bright and clear, the reflection of the firelight dancing in them.

“I’m not going to arrest you,” she said quietly.

“Why not?”

“I don’t believe that people should be judged on their past and on the people around them. I judge them on their future, on what they can do.”

“Oh.” Éponine took a step back, and then sat down on the ground where she stood, just dropped down on to the grass as if the strings holding her up had been cut.

The other woman walked over to her, shrugging her bow and quiver off her back and placing then gently down with her sword on the ground, and then she sat down next to Éponine, leaning back onto her hands, long legs stretched out in front, towards the heat of the fire. Éponine felt small, crumpled, holding her knees to her chest as if by making herself smaller she could protect herself.

“I’m sorry to overwhelm you,” Cosette said quietly. “It’s just that I know a lot about that Thénardier- you father- I know a lot about his… activities. Some from other people’s stories, some from personal experience.”

Éponine turned her head to look at Cosette. Cosette was staring off into the distance, and that made it easier. “What did he do?”

“Oh. When I was a kid, I was fostered by the Thénardiers. It was… bad. But you’ll know that, you were there too.”

Éponine had been there, and she did know, she could remember. She didn’t remember Cosette, but she remembered a stream of kids coming in and out of their inn. Her mother made them clean after the guests like _servants_ and smacked them when they cried. Éponine had still been tolerated by her parents then, but she had never once tried to help one of the children, so small and sad and scared. The matter-of-fact way Cosette was speaking made her feel even worse.

“I was taken away by my adopted father, and then eventually I became a knight, and when we started getting word of the things he was doing, I took the mission. All his manipulation and cons and theft, we’ve got notes of it, and he’ll be in jail, and you’ll be free.”

Éponine felt out of breath again, at the thought of her father being in jail, at the thought of being free of him, but she stared up at the stars and her voice was faint when she spoke. “I’m just as bad as he is. I never stood up to him, I never helped anyone. That’s just as bad as he is.”

Éponine flinched as Cosette put her hand on Éponine’s shoulder, but didn’t move away. The weight of it was comforting and reassuring.

“Why was he trying to kill you?” Cosette asked, and Éponine closed her eyes at the memory of how barely five minutes ago, she had almost _died_. She could still feel her father’s arm crushing her throat, see the glint on his knife.

“I told him I was leaving,” she whispered, and risked a glance at Cosette, who smiled gently. “I told him I didn’t want to be a part of his schemes anymore. He didn’t like it.”

“See,” Cosette said, and she didn’t sound smug, but she _should_ be. “You’re better than he is. And you could be better still. You made a choice.”

“But I don’t know what to _do_ ,” Éponine said quietly. “All I know is how to fight and how to steal.”

“Have you ever thought about being a knight?”

Éponine stared at Cosette again, feeling blindsided. “What? Me, a _knight?_ ”

Cosette seemed amused by the shock on Éponine’s face. “Like I said. We don’t judge people based on the past. If you can fight, and you want to make things right, you could be a knight.”

Éponine blinked. “I do want to make things right,” she said quietly.

“Well then.” Cosette got to her feet, and picked up her weapons, strapping her sword to her belt and slinging her bow and quiver over her back. She cupped her hands to her mouth and made a clicking sound, and to Éponine’s surprise, a horse came galloping out of the forest, whinnying as it did. Seeing Éponine’s face, Cosette smiled. “It’s best to keep her away from fights,” she explained, “but she’s very well trained.”

She turned to look at Éponine, suddenly serious, reaching down at pulling her to her feet. Éponine could feel the heat of the fire on one side of her face, and the cold of the night on the other. Her trousers were damp from where she’d been sitting in the dark, and she could see her father still unconscious on the ground.

“You don’t have to,” Cosette said. “I’m going to take your father away, and he’ll be locked up, and he won’t be able to hurt you anymore. You can do whatever you want. I just think you would make a good knight.”

“How do you know?” Éponine said, finally voicing her fear. “What if I’m a terrible knight? You don’t know anything about me. I haven’t even told you my name.”

Cosette grinned, and the expression lit up her face. “No-one ever really knows. _I_ didn’t know. You can only try your best.”

Éponine blinked, and then laughed, still a bit disbelieving. But there was something about this woman that made her _want_ to try. “I’m Éponine.”

“ _Sir_ Éponine, maybe one day,” Cosette said, and Éponine felt the smile grow across her own face, feeling hopeful for the first time in a very long time.

**Author's Note:**

> I googled the plural of low-life and I'm 99% sure that it is low-lifes but honestly I hate it. Should be lives, SURELY.
> 
> You can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/holIyshort) \- come and say hi!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Lost, attacked, then found](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26254354) by [Get_below_my_line_of_vision](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Get_below_my_line_of_vision/pseuds/Get_below_my_line_of_vision)




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